Production planning is used to plan scenarios within a defined area of a production of products. One aspect of production planning is the determination of material flows of products which are part of the defined area of the production.
Usually, for such a product there is a demand and the demand specifies a demanded quantity and a demand date when the demand is due. There is also an availability of the product, and the availability specifies an available quantity and an availability date when the available quantity is scheduled to be available.
In case the demanded quantities exceed the available quantities, it may be possible to create further availabilities of the product and schedule the availabilities with the result that they acquire an available quantity and an availability date. The creation of availabilities of the product may include the scheduling of further processes which are required to provide the available quantities. It further may be possible that the availabilities have to comply with specific conditions which affect the available quantity or the availability date.
Frequently, the number of demands and availabilities for the product is large. Furthermore, in a dynamic production environment, the demands and availabilities change permanently. In such cases, one may use a computer system for processing demands and availabilities for the product. This also may be true for allocating the available quantities for the demanded quantities. The allocating procedure determines how the demanded quantities are covered by the available quantities. Generally, it is possible that one demanded quantity is covered by one or more available quantities and it is as well possible that one available quantity covers one or more demanded quantities.
The results of the allocating procedure determine the material flow of the product within the system of production planning. The allocating procedure may be required in the system of production planning to compute uncovered demanded quantities. The system of production planning may then adjust a production plan so that a previously uncovered demanded quantity is covered in a new allocating procedure.
Allocating the available quantities for the demanded quantities may be done by using only a time criteria. This can lead to a result where demands with an earlier date are covered by availabilities with an earlier date compared to other demands with the date farer in the future. Additional information which is available for the demands or for the availabilities is ignored in this allocating procedure. This may require modifying the result when the additional information is relevant for a final result. It may also require accepting the result which is disadvantageous taking into account the additional information.
Allocating the available quantities for the demanded quantities may further include assigning a priority to the demands and taking the priority and the time into account. This may lead to results where many demands with a higher priority are covered by availabilities which are in time and many demands with a lower priority are covered by availabilities which are not in time. Additional information which is available for the availabilities is ignored in this allocating procedure. Again, this may require modifying the results when the ignored information is relevant or accepting the disadvantageous result.
An efficient and reliable allocating procedure gives results which require less modification due to ignored information. Such an allocation procedure may be efficient, i.e., it generally achieves the result faster, and is reliable, i.e., it may achieve advantageous results.